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Fresh Clippings - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Fresh Clippings

Win this painting! It's simple, just like my Facebook page and when I reach 200 fans, I'll have a drawing to see who wins the painting. No strings attached, no gimmicks, it's really that easy to win. Currently, I'm at 180 fans, so someone will be winning this painting soon. You can like my page here.

 I've had these flowers growing in a pot out by our garden all summer. Somehow through the 60 plus days of 100 degree weather we've had, I've been able to keep them alive and growing. That is until the other day when I was mowing the lawn and accidentally knocked the pot off the ledge it was on. It flipped over and landed upside down, breaking almost all the flower stems. I couldn't believe my bad luck! When I was done mowing, I went back and cut all the broken stems off and put the flowers in a vase. I originally thought I would paint them that way, but I wasn't happy with the way they looked in the vase, so I finally took them out and laid them down in this arrangement. While this made for a better painting, it did, ultimately, spell the doom the flowers.

Here's how the painting came to life:

Believe it or not, this is the end of my rough block-in. I used a different panel that I normally do for this painting, and the paint went on a little differently. This surface is a linen, which I've used before, but this one seemed to really dry my initial washes out quickly and didn't really allow for the blending and lifting I normally do with a paper towel. This is why the flowers aren't blocked in at this point. I had planned to do this by wiping them out.

One of the really nice advantages of this panel is I could paint with very dry layers of paint to build up color and variety. The entire little red tin is painted with dry brush strokes, which allowed for the paint underneath to show through a little. I really like this effect because of the sense of texture it gives the painting. The flower is painted with thicker brush strokes.

Before I painted in the rest of the flowers, I really wanted to make sure I had the plate well drawn and painted, which is what I wanted to concentrate on in this image. Once I had this under control, I painted in the flowers, stems and leaves. 

The finished painting.

Fresh Clippings

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 5x7 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: NFS

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Hot Terra Cotta by George De Chiara

Hot Terra Cotta

 It's been a little over a week, maybe even closer to 2 weeks, since I last painted. Raising a newborn and a 22 month old has really started to catch up with me and my wife. We both are starting look a little exhausted and sleep deprived at this point, but there is hope. The baby is starting to sleep longer at night and our 22 month old is starting to adjust to her new sister and slipping back into her routines.

Anyway, I've been thinking about doing this painting for a while now. It's a commission piece for one of my collectors who wanted a painting to go along with one of the 50 paintings in 50 days pieces he bought. That painting was of cayenne peppers, so to complement it, he wanted haberneros. Habeneros have beautiful variations in colors that range from bright yellows to deep reds when on the verge of being overripe, so they make great subject matter for still lifes. I really didn't think it would be that hard to find a few good haberneros for this painting, but I had to go to 3 different stores before I found any that didn't look like they've been sitting in the produce section for months.  The first two stores only had the deep red color, which, while pretty, doesn't really capture my interest. Finally, I headed to the Mexican market and found what I was looking for. With these colorful peppers in hand, I was anxious to get back to the studio and start painting again.

Now, I seem to get rusty quickly when it comes to painting. Too long of a break (anything over 3 days) and I'm paying for it the first few days back. Knowing this, I made sure not to rush the painting process. Instead, I committed to wiping off anything I didn't like and taking as much time as needed to get something I was happy with. After a few days, I seemed to be back in the swing of things and I was able to finish up this painting.

Here's how it came to life:

Here's a photograph of the still life I was painting. You might notice I didn't paint the little pepper at the top of the terra-cotta pot that's standing up. Originally, I thought I would pull back a little further, but once I started placing the painting on the canvas, I realized I needed to crop in a little tighter to get the right feel. After I did this, I really didn't like the way that pepper looked, just barely squeaking into the painting, so I left it out.

This image was taken at the end of my rough block-in. This was actually the second block-in I did. The first one was pulled back a little more, but I think it made the peppers too small in the picture, and, since they are the reason my client commissioned this painting, I wanted to make sure they were very prominent. You might also notice that I only blocked in one little pepper just to the right of the plate. Originally, that's all I had there. Once I got to that portion of the painting, I felt it needed more interest, so I added another pepper.

I give the block-in a few minutes to dry so it doesn't blend with the more accurate colors I start to use in this stage. Most of the paint at this point is still pretty thin, except for the plate and the peppers on it. This was the area I started with, so it's the most complete at this point. The peppers are mostly all painted with the same colors, Cadmium Yellow Deep, Cadmium Red and Cadmiun Yellow Pale, just mixed in different ratios with each other.

At this point, I've more or less finished off the top half of the canvas. Since I had given most of the painting a good once over in the previous stage, this part of the painting went pretty quickly. The terra-cotta pots are painted with different mixtures of Terra Rosa, Cadmium Yellow Pale, Cadmium Red and Viridian. To finish the painting off from here, I pretty much worked from the middle down. I spent some time trying a few different arrangements of peppers to the right of the plate. I liked the two peppers close together the best out of everything I tried. I feel it gives this area a little interest and by having the stem touch the plate it really tied the left and right half of the painting together well.

The finished painting.

Hot Terra Cotta

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: SOLD

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

50 paintings and a baby in 55 days!

The Challenge

Sometime around the end of each year I, like many others, set a few goals for the upcoming year. I don't do the normal ones that everyone does and never follows through on, like going to the gym everyday or to give something up. Instead, I concentrated on specific goals for my art career, like promoting my newsletter, increasing my social media presence, and painting with and meeting other artists.  One of the more ambitious painting projects on my list was a 50 paintings in 50 days challenge, where for 50 days I would post a new painting, blog about it and post it on eBay for auction.

Balancing Act

While I generally paint every day anyway, I really wanted to test my stamina by producing and promoting a daily painting. On a personal note, my wife was also a few weeks pregnant with our second child when I set this goal, so it was important to be finished with the challenge before her arrival. Because of this, I thought limiting this to 50 days seemed reasonable. Once the baby was born, there would be no way I could expect to paint every day with a newborn and a toddler running around the house. As the year went on and I worked on some of the other goals I had set out for myself, I realized I was running out of time to do the 50 painting challenge. Our daughter was due August 13^th, so I subtracted a few days from her due date and counted backwards from there to see when I would have to start the challenge. If I started on June 20^th, then I would finish on August 8^th, which was almost a full week before she was due. This left about two weeks to get everything else ready. What is that old cliché about the best laid plans…? Naturally, our daughter arrived on full week early on August 6th!  I had no choice but to take a few days off, and help my wife welcome our newest daughter to the world. It was then I decided to rename the challenge to 50 Paintings and a Baby in 55 days. Yes, I know it takes longer than 55 days for make a baby, but you get the idea.

Supplies and Pre-Sales Promotion

Once I had set the dates, there was just two weeks to get everything ready, so I ordered my painting supplies. I didn't want to run out of anything during this time, so I stocked up on canvas panels and paints. Though I debated making the panels myself, ultimately I did all the paintings for this challenge on 6x6 inch RayMar panels. Then, I quickly designed some promotional postcards to send to everyone on my mailing list to build up a little momentum. Once they were ordered, I turned to social media to promote the challenge through my Facebook fan page. I knew I would need to increase my fans for this challenge to be successful. So, I posted an image along with an invitation to follow me on this painting challenge on other Facebook pages where I included a link back to my fan page so people could like my page easily. I also bought a onetime ad for $50 that ran for the two weeks before the challenge started and a week after it began. Between these two things, I was able to grow my fan page “likes” from 60 to 169, even after a few fans inevitably stopped liking my page. At first, the drops were a little discouraging, but in the end I realized I’d rather have fans that wanted to engage with me then have a lot of fans that never did. My newsletter subscribers increased by similar percentages, as did my Twitter followers.

The Daily Grind

Once June 20^th rolled around, I quickly realized just how busy these next 50 days were going to be. To try to ease some of this whenever I could I painted two paintings in one day or I’d try to get three done over two days. I wasn’t able to do this often, maybe three or four times though out the 50 days, but these little head starts came in really handy when time fell short or un-expected delays popped up. A typical painting day started around 9am after I dropped our older daughter off at day care. I’d come home and started setting up my still life or looking through photo reference for something to paint that day. I would paint most of the day and post progress pictures on Facebook. Around 5:30pm, I would pick up our daughter and spend the next few hours with her and my wife. After we put her to bed around 8pm, I could start on my blog post for the day and my eBay listing. My blog posts always took a little longer then I thought they would, since almost all of them where step-by-step descriptions of the painting process. I did get more efficient with practice, but, on average, they took me about an hour and a half each night.

One interesting thing I noticed when doing these blogs is that they really forced me to think about my painting approach and why I painted the way I did. This was a great revelation for me and allowed me to really refine my process even more. I honestly didn’t realize how much of my painting process was subconscious, but writing about it every day got me thinking about why I painted the way I did.

Social Media and Connecting with the Fans

 Before the challenge, I would post on Facebook about once a day, sometimes making an announcement or two, but I wasn’t really using it to its full potential. The challenge changed my approach, from using Facebook as a memo board to using it as a primary communication device to engage my fans.  This has made all the difference between success and failure. To keep my fans up to date, I would take progress pictures of my paintings and post them several times a day. Sometimes, I would tease the audience by asking what they thought today’s block-in would turn out to be. This was a great way to get the conversation going.  One of the most memorable threads started out very simply, and led to a serious discussion of subjects my fans would like to see me paint. The conversation was very good for me on two levels: 1.) I took some of the suggestions for subject matter, and 2.) this opened the door to questions about commission work for after the challenge. 

Perhaps most importantly, I would also post the link to my eBay auction for each painting and my blog is set to post on there as well thanks to the handy work of the FASO support team. I really think this helped engage my fans and I know it made a few of them want to bid on the paintings. Some of them going as far as to claim ownership of a painting before it was finished. I was also lucky enough to have a few of my fans regularly share my auction links with their friends, which lead to more than a few bids.

Taking the Leap on eBay

I’ve sold my paintings on eBay for the last 16 months before the painting challenge started. Based on an excellent article by Jack White on the FAV blog, I changed the way I listed my paintings on eBay. I followed Jack’s advice and listed all of these paintings with an opening bid of just one cent. This was a big chance to take, and I had many fears of paintings selling for a penny. Luckily, this never happened, and as of today, all the paintings sold have been bidded up to higher prices. These 55 days have attracted the highest number of page hits, watchers, and bids that I have ever had with eBay. Each auction was posted to my Facebook page, and I sent out newsletters every week or so that included all the paintings for the last week and links to the auctions. I also worked on the listing titles, again based on Jack White’s advice, to try to have more people find my auctions through the eBay search.  

What’s even more encouraging is that the summer months are usually the slowest time for me on eBay, so this result is a nice boost in spite of a few mistakes along the way. The worst one is that I didn’t pay attention to when my auctions would end, which wasn’t a big deal most of the time.  However, I had one end on the fourth of July and no one wants to be inside bidding on a painting when the fireworks are going off. That weekend, the paintings posted didn’t break $15, so no more auctions that end on holidays.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I had a great time doing this painting challenge. While successful on many levels, the most gratifying is that I developed more contact with my fans and collectors. So many people took the time to write to me and let know they were enjoying the paintings or the step-by-step blogs. Some even wrote to wish my wife luck with the new baby, which thrilled us both. I had a few artists write and say they this challenge inspired them to try something similar. All of this really meant the world to me and kept me going when I needed it the most. So thanks to all of you who read this! What now? Well, I’ll still be painting and posting my paintings here and on eBay. I’m going to take a little bit of time to work on a few larger pieces and I have a couple of commissions I need to finish, but I’m already planning the next painting challenge, so stay tuned.

Painting 50 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Tools Of The Trade - by George De Chiara

Tools Of The Trade

Painting number 50! I can't believe it; I made it! For this last painting, it seemed appropriate to use some of the equipment I've used for the last 50+ days to make these paintings. One of the things that made this painting an interesting challenge is that the palette that everything is sitting on is the one I use every day, so I had to use a different palette while painting today. I didn't think this would matter, but it turns out I've developed a lot of muscle memory as to where each color is on my palette. Most of the time, I don't even think about where a color is, my brush just goes right to it. However, with this new palette I had to stop and think about where the color I wanted was before reaching for it. This made me think about my color mixtures more than usual, thus keeping me on my toes while painting.

Here's how the painting came to life today:

This is the end of my block-in. Everything at this point is roughed in with very thin color. The lighter areas are wiped out with a paper towel dipped in a little turpentine. While this stage looks rough and unrefined, all the important details are addressed in this pass, such as the placement of each object and where the lightest lights and darkest darks will be.

Once the first pass has had a few minutes to dry, I can start to refine my drawing and colors. I started with the brush cutting across the canvas, since this is the primary focus. This is also what I'm judging the size and placement of rest of the objects from. I'm using a combination of dry brush strokes and ones loaded with paint at this stage. For example, the brush is painted with thicker, wet paint, while the medium cup that it's sitting on is done almost entirely with dry brush stokes over what was already there.

I continue with the lower portion of the painting in the same way, using wet and dry brush strokes to develop it. The tubes of paint are painted with thicker wet paint, but for the palette, I try to use dry brushes so the color from the initial wash will show through. This helps gives the painting some depth and interest.

The finished painting.

Tools Of The Trade

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Painting 49 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Trails Edge - by George De Chiara

Trails Edge

 This painting is based on a photograph I took several years ago while out hiking with my wife on vacation. We were in Oklahoma at the time, following a trail in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge when I noticed this little rock outcropping along the trail we were on. I was struck by the light-colored rocks against the dark background of the forest and snapped a few photographs to remember the scene by. I'm not sure what made me remember this images today, but I'm glad I did. Little landscape scenes like this are loads of fun to paint. Below is how the painting came to life:

This image was taken at the end of my rough block-in. There's still very little paint on the canvas at this point. I started by toning the whole canvas with a little Viridian and Yellow Ochre thinned with turpentine. While this was still a wet, I used a paper towel to wipe out the rocks. I then used slightly thicker paint to rough in the trees in the background. This is still very thin paint without any white paint at this point. I'll let this dry for a few minutes before continuing.

Now that the rough-in has had a few minutes to dry, I continue working on the whole painting at the same time with very dry brushes and paint mixtures. This allows me to build up layers of paint and color, along with lots of texture, which is just what these rocks need. By working on the whole painting at the same time, this painting came together faster than I thought it would. Since the painting flowed so well, this is the last image I took before it was done.

The finished painting.

Trails Edge

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Painting 48 of the 50 Day painting challenge - It's A Girl! - by George De Chiara

It's A Girl!

 Well, if you've been paying attention to this challenge, you'll know that I'm actually over the 50 days mark. I had to take a few days break when my wife went into labor with our second child this past weekend. Our due date was supposed to be about 5 days after the painting challenge was to end, but our little girl just couldn't wait any longer and made her début on Saturday afternoon. I'm only three paintings short of my goal, so I'm definitely going to finish it up over the next few days. I've thought about changing the name of the challenge to 50 paintings and a baby in 55 days. What do you think?

 Below is how today's painting came to life. Can you guess where my inspiration came from today?

I completely forgot to take a picture of my still life set up before I broke it down, so I'll start this step-by-step blog with my block-in. For this painting, I did a monotone block-in. This is done mostly by toning the whole canvas with a little Transparent Oxide Red mixed with a touch of Terra Rosa. This is thinned down with turpentine and wiped with a paper towel to smooth it out. I also use the paper towel to wipe out some of the lighter areas. I used the same mixture with less turpentine added to it to draw in a few darker lines and masses of the objects.

I give the block-in a few minutes to dry so that underlying color doesn't interfere with the paint I apply over it. I'm no longer thinning my paint with turpentine at this point. Now I'm concentrating on getting accurate color and drawing. I started with the Minnie Mouse rattle, since this area is my center of interest. I want to be able to compare everything else against this area in terms of color saturation, edges and contrast. My goal is to keep all the other parts of the painting just slightly less interesting than this area.

Although I don't want to detract from the center, the background is still important. These areas should lead the viewer's eye through the painting and back to the central focus so I'll give these areas just as much attention.

The finished painting.

It's A Girl!

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 47 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Little Brook - by George De Chiara

Little Brook

 After yesterday's painting of the river rapids I was still in the mood to paint more rushing water. I once again turned to my reference photos to find my inspiration for this painting. This is actually a location not far from our home. The water isn't always running through this little creek, but after a good rain it looks great. I was lucky enough to find this spot shortly after a rain so there was plenty of running water through it. I snapped a couple of images and today I finally got a chance to use them.

 Sorry I don't have any step-by-step images for this painting. The last few day's have been extremely busy around here as my wife and I prepare for the arrival of our new daughter. I'm lucky to find a few minutes to write this little bit on the blog. I'll try to have more later.

The finished painting.

Little Brook

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 46 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Where the Water Runs Rapid - by George De Chiara

Where the Water Runs Rapid

 Today I painted one of my favorite subjects, white water rapids! It seems like it's been forever since I've done one. I'm not really sure why I've had the lapse, but today I put an end to it. I shuffled through my photo references of scenes like this till I found one that I wanted to paint. This scene is from Medicine Park, OK. My wife and spent a week there a few years ago and had a great time hiking around the trials and sight seeing. We took a hike called the 40 Foot Hole Trail, which follows a river for about a mile and a half and is full of scenery like this. Ultimately, the trails ends at a 40 foot hole at the bottom of the river, which is created from the waterfalls pounding down. Now, I'll be honest, I'm not sure if we ever found the hole or not. It's not very clearly marked which waterfall supposedly caused this, but with a digital card full of images like this one I really didn't care.

Below is how today's painting came to life. I don't have a lot of images for this one. I was short of time today and painted as fast as I could and often forgot to stop and take photographs. This was one of those paintings that fell off the brush and when you are there to just catch the paint, it's best not to stop.

This image is taken at the end of my rough block-in. The paint is not quite as thinned out as I normally use for a block-in, but it's not thick either. There isn't any white paint used up to this point. All of the lighter shades are either done with turpentine to thin the paint or a paper towel to wipe the paint off leaving just a stain of light color. When I paint from this point on, I want to try to preserve as much of this under painting as possible, because I think it will help give the rocks and water subtle layers of color and interest.

Now I've started to add white paint into my color mixtures and almost no turpentine. This makes the paint very dry, so when I drag it across the canvas, it leaves little spots where the background colors come through. The effect is most notable in the rocks as they progress. At this point, all I've worked on is the water. Once I'm happy with how the water looks, I'll move on to cleaning up the rocks, giving them more interest and color. I'll mix the colors for the rocks in the same dry fashion I did for the water. It's kind of ironic, but when painting very wet rushing water I like to use mostly dry slow brush strokes. Weird, huh?

The finished painting.

Where the Water Runs Rapid

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 45 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Pearl Necklace - by George De Chiara

Pearl Necklace

 Last night my wife came into the studio after I was done painting for the day and mentioned she had an idea for a still life painting. She then set down 3 or 4 bottles of perfume and a pearl necklace. At the time, I didn't really notice how they looked  since I was busy finishing up some other tasks. This morning, I went into the studio to get the day started and noticed the little pile of goodies she left in there. I was immediately drawn the way the bottles looked. I cleaned out my still life from the day before and set up this arrangement. I had never thought to paint these little bottles before even though I see them sitting on the vanity everyday. I suppose that this is a rather pointed reminder to look at the shapes of things, and not what they are when looking for subjects to paint.

Here's how today's painting came to life:

This image was taken at the end of my rough block-in. Rather than my normal block-in for this painting, I used more of a line drawing, which is mostly monochrome in color. I really didn't have any reason for doing it other than I just felt like mixing it up a little today.

I began this painting with the blue bottle since I'm using this one to judge the size of all the other objects in the painting. This bottle is a lot of fun to paint. It has just enough translucency so you can just see through it and a nice reflection to it. This combination makes it pretty easy to just squint at it and see simple, clear shapes.

I took this image at the point where I had pretty much finished up the top half of the painting and have a block-in on the lower half. Most of the background went pretty quickly, so I didn't take a lot of photographs in-between this photo and the previous one. For the necklace and little brush, I used a paper towel to wipe out the shapes after roughing in everything else first.

The finished painting.

Pearl Necklace

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 44 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Fresh Bales - by George De Chiara

Fresh Bales

 For today's painting, I turned to one of my old plein air sketches for reference. I know a lot of artists work up their plein air studies into larger studio works, but this is the first time I've tried this myself. One of the things it made me realize about my plein air paintings is it's more important, to me anyway, to record more accurate color notes. The drawing can be refined later, but the color can only be captured out there on location. The other thing I need to remember to do is to take a photograph of the scene I'm painting for future reference. Still, it was an interesting experience trying to work from my old sketch. It gave me the chance to address some of the things I wish I had done differently while out painting on location. Plus, I got to revisit a subject that I enjoy painting. I could still recall many of the details from the day I did the initial study, like the heat from the pavement I was standing on while painting and the smell of the horses nearby.

Here's how today's painting came to life (again):

This is the old plein air sketch I used to base today's painting on. I took a lot of liberties with it when I re-worked it today. First off, I lowered the tree line to give a little more room for the sky. Then, I also tried to give the trees a little more definition and interesting shape. I also rearranged the hale bales. Finally, I changed the lines in the field to run left to right across the canvas rather than vertically like they do here.

I did a little sketch before I began to paint to work out where things where going to be. Once I was happy with that I started with this rough block-in. Like most of my block-ins, this is done with paint thinned down with turpentine and a paper towel to wipe out lighter areas.

After a few minutes, the rough block-in is dry and I can start to paint over it without lifting any of that underlying color into my current paint mixtures. I started with the sky because I find it easier to paint the trees over the sky than it is to paint the sky around the trees. It also just seems to be the way I approach landscape paintings. I almost always start at the top of the canvas and work my way down.

Here, I'm continuing to work my way down the canvas. These are pretty early color choices, as I'm working out the final placement of the hay bales. Once I'm happy with where they are, I can begin to refine the colors in the field and the hay bales. While this isn't the way I'd plan to paint the field, what I did shortly after I took this photo is wipe off most of the paint with a dry paper towel. This produced some nice light color and dried the canvas a bit. From there, I went back over the field with a lot of dry brush strokes of color and slowly built it up again. I don't think I could have ever planned this method, but it  seemed to work in the end. I find I do this from time to time, when I've built up too much paint on the canvas too soon. How do I know it's too soon? Usually, if I attempting to lay in what I still consider base color and it's mixing with what's already on the canvas, then I have too much paint applied to the canvas. If it's a small area, I can just take a paper towel, lay it over that area and gently rub the paint off. On larger areas, I just wipe it off the canvas.

The finished painting.

Fresh Bales

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 43 of the 50 Day painting challenge - A Cluck Off The Old Block - by George De Chiara

A Cluck Off The Old Block

 While painting this today, I realized that the rooster in the background is probably the father of this younger chick. Ever since my wife's grandparents got a couple of roosters last year, their chicken count has really started to increase. In fact, the last time we were there, they had more pullets (young chickens) running around than anything else, including this one. Given the similar coloring and timing, I'd say it's a safe bet that he's the father. That's where the name comes from, rather than a chip off the old block, I changed it to Cluck. Get it? Hmm...maybe I'm spending too much time going over animal sounds with our 21 month old daughter.

Here's how the painting came to life today:

I took this photograph at the end of my rough block-in. This step is normally done fairly quickly, maybe 10 - 15 minutes of painting time. The paint is thinned down with turpentine so I can paint fast without needing to load up my brush again with paint. I also use a paper towel to wipe off areas for two purposes: first, I want some places to be lighter, and then to smear some of the paint to kill the white of the canvas. You can see this in the background streaks.

I let the rough block-in dry for a few minutes; that's really all it takes for the turpentine to evaporate and the canvas to dry. Then I begin painting with thicker paint. My goal now is to get more accurate drawing and color on the canvas. The rough block-in has laid out where everything is going to be, so I can now work slower and try to be more accurate.

So, I got the painting to this point and then took a break for lunch. After lunch, I wiped off the entire lower half of the painting. I wasn't happy with the little chicken's color and I felt the foreground was getting way too dark. Sometimes it's just easier to wipe things off than it is to try to paint over them. In fact, I've noticed lately that I tend to wipe or scrape off areas without even giving much thought these days. It's one of the greatest advantages of oil paints, so I might as well take use of it.

The finished painting.

A Cluck Off The Old Block

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.